WPC: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 beta coming in September

Dynamics CRM 2011, the next version of Microsoft’s customer relationship management software, will be released to beta in September and officially released by the end of this year, Microsoft announced today.

Microsoft is demoing the upcoming product at the annual Worldwide Partner Conference, which began Sunday and runs through Thursday in Washington, D.C. Along with Dynamics CRM comes its cloud-based counterpart, Dynamics CRM Online.

New to Dynamics CRM 2011 will be the Microsoft CRM Marketplace, where businesses can sell and buy CRM solutions, download them and then deploy them across their Dynamics CRM systems. Such solutions can include sets of configurations and document templates that help companies work with their customers, Brad Wilson, general manager for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, told seattlepi.com.

“Customers and partners each want an easy way” to share solutions, he said. “So that’s why we’re building the marketplace.”

Microsoft partners will be able to set their own prices on the Microsoft CRM Marketplace, which will be launched along with the Dynamics CRM 2011 beta in September. Microsoft also is expanding Dynamics CRM Online into eight additional markets — Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Cyprus, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago — by the end of the year.

Also new to Dynamics CRM 2011 are the “ribbon” user interface (introduced with Office 2007), “role-tailored” UI design, the ability to create multiple real-time CRM dashboards, deeper SharePoint integration, and support for server-side code that can be written by Microsoft partners and hosted in Microsoft data centers, Wilson said.